The walk through the meadoeaceful, which roblem. My brai unattended, had chewed on something truly cursed—skill descriptions.

  Specifically, the nonsense poetry the system insisted on using instead of just telling me what the damn skill does.

  “Observe as the very ground spires to halt your enemies’ advance.”

  Oh, fantastic. What does that mean? Quick sand? Vines? Spontaneous sinkholes? Maybe the grass itself would rise in rebellion against my foes.

  That’d be fun.

  I sighed, rubbing my temples as I trudged along. Thanks, system. Really helpful. You could just tell me, but no—gotta keep the naughty exploiter in suspense.

  Not that I was actually surprised. There had always been skills and items like this, even iure. The kind of meics that required trial, error, and a little bit of blind faith to figure out.

  So, you know—my forte.

  Hehe.

  The trek stretched on, nothing but rolling hills and zy wildlife in the distance. Occasionally, I spotted something—s, birds as rge as me, the occasional oversized lizard—but they all kept their distance. Just as well. I wasn’t in the mood for unnecessary fights.

  Yet.

  Instead, I walked iive quiet, rereading skill descriptions and grumbling to myself about system who thought vague, dramatic phrasing was more fun than actual information.

  I wasn’t going in pletely blind—I had done my homework. Last night, before watg Katherine’s stream, I had scrolled through Riker’s Colle Of Guides, or as I liked to call it, Riker Does Literally Everything. Seriously, if it is somethin Rimelion based, he was doing it.

  Acc to an explorer, NightSwallow, Ngogeon was set in some sort of s—maybe a bog. Holy, I didn’t know the difference. All I o know was that it was wet, muddy, and full of things I could freeze solid. At least, acc to her. She even put that behind a paywall, and Riker’s were insisting I couldn’t g, so I sent a few credits her way.

  We’ll see.

  When I finally reached the outskirts, the nd shifted beh my feet.

  What had once been rolling green hills fttened out, the grass giving way to twisted reeds and thick, gnarled roots half-submerged in pools of stagnant water. The air turned humid, thick with the st of wet earth and deg pnt matter.

  A stant orchestra of croaking frogs and buzzing is filled the air, an ever-present remihat nature was absolutely thriving in this damp hellscape.

  The ground squelched beh my heels.

  Wait.

  It should have. Instead, my [Gcial Tread Heels] whispered over the terrain, untouched by the mud. I smirked, and giddiness was filling my heart.

  Ahead, the water grew darker, murky depths shifting with unseen movement. Large patches of floating moss disguised what robably deep water, and arees jutted out at odd aheir roots twisting in a chaotic mess above and below the surface. Mist g low to the ground, swirling around as if trying to hide the dangers lurkih.

  This was definitely a bog. Or a s. Whatever, it’s gross, and I hate it.

  Let’s freeze it.

  But there—past the fog, past the grees, half-buried in the sludge—was the entrao Ngogeon.

  Small-ish weathered stone archway, its carvings long worn by time and the relentless s. It looked as if it had been swallowed by the ndscape, vines creeping up its surface, moss ging like it had cimed the pce as its own.

  I took a breath, grinning. Finally.

  I strode in.

  [You found ‘Ngogeoering instance #3]It was an instanced dungeon? Take that, Riker! This was a game, not reality. No fighting sweaty tryhards for boss kills! Just me, my dungeon, and whatever horrors were about to crawl out of this bog.

  The moment I stepped through the crumbling archway, a wave of thick, stifli rolled over me. The temperature had to have jumped by at least ten degrees. My skin prickled, and a sheen of sweat started f immediately.

  This is disgusting.

  Even with my amazing, fwless, legendary heels, I wasn’t walking on solid ground anymore. The moment my foot touched the surface, it sank into lukewarm, murky water.

  Ugh. I was wrong. So very wrong.

  Something gurgled.

  So was NightSwallow!

  A deep, wet sound, like thick mud sug at boots after heavy rain. I g my side at the notification that had popped up.

  [??? Lv.10]Type: 2-unon | HP: 199/199The bubbling got louder.

  The water ed, ripples spreading outward as something shifted beh the surface. Thick clumps of mud began rising, f a vaguely humanoid shape—but it wasn’t solid. It was oozing, stantly shifting, as if the very s itself was vomiting up a creature from its depths.

  Riker! Refund! The girl said it was iing!

  Its skin—if I could call it that—was a dripping mass of dark, sy sludge, flecked with rotting pnt matter and bits of uifiable boangled within. Pockets of gas trapped ihe gunk burst with each sluggish movement, releasing the kind of foul stench that made me immediately regret inhaling.

  Oh. That’s rancid.

  Its arms stretched unnaturally long, tendrils of sticky, slimy mud sloughing off, only to be absorbed bato its shifting mass.

  One glowing eye, yellow-green like festering water, blinked out from the mess of sludge making up its head. Its mouth—if that gaping hole could be called a mouth—gurgled again, dripping with some thicker, bck tar-like substance.

  Then it lurched forward, dragging itself toward me, leaving behind a trail of bubbling filth ier.

  I wrinkled my nose.

  Okay, that’s just nasty.

  The moment I reached for my mana, it answered instantly—as if it had been waiting, coiled just beh my skin, anticipating my call. It wasn’t just magic; it resence, a force woven into my will.

  And I badly.

  With a fliy wrist, a wave of frost surged, curving around my fingers like a living thing, hungry to be unleashed. My magic flowed steadier than I expected, smoother, more refined. A portion of my mana—tiny pared to the spell itself—was siphooward my cape, so casting became easier, like my magic was reinf itself, sharpening, perfeg.

  My fingers snapped forward, releasing the e of frost directly at the advang creature. The air cracked, white mist curling from the sudden drop in temperature. But before I could watch the effect, a notification bloomed ay vision, its glow cutting into my focus.

  [Battle attuning: Frostborne Regalia]

  [Set Name: Frostborne Regalia][Description: A garment fit for a ruler who walks the liween id elegance, poeril. Fed in the echoes of a lost kingdom, its beauty ceals the strength of a sn unbowed by time or fate.][Unlocked: Self-repair, ???]

  A set bonus? Now?

  The intrusive windoed my attention for just a fra of a sed—long enough for the bog creature to lunge.

  Damn.

  I barely had time to react before a mass of rotting, sludgy filth colpsed toward me, its putrid form blotting out my view of the s. I swiped the notification away, muted the system notices entirely, and willed my mana into motion. To protect myself.

  At the same time, my new automatic skill activated.

  [Diamond Reflex activated]

  Mana draihe world shifted.

  For a heartbeat, everything moved slower, eaent stretched out like a thread being pulled taut. I could see the mud-slicked tendrils, see the shimmering beads of water sliding off its dripping body, the gas pockets in its form pulsing, ready to burst.

  Despite the reflex, I was too te.

  The impact smmed into me like a boulder of sopping, putrid decay. The wet, ging mass struck my chest, the forog the breath from my lungs, sending me skidding backward. My heels dragged through the mire, keeping me upright but doing nothing to stop the hot, slimy weight pressing against me.

  It was disgusting.

  Thick, viscous filth g to my clothes, seeping into the fabric, ooziween openings. The stench—a revolting mix of s rot, stagnant water, and something too rancid to name—burned in my nostrils. I gasped, pushing against the mass, but the creature wasn’t do. Its form rippled, shifting, pulling itself tighter around me.

  I willed my mana into a, surging it outward like a frozen tide.

  Ice rippled from my core, spreading ay body, eng me as the disgusting mass was suffog me. My limbs locked up as frost engulfed my arms, legs—hell, even my chest, the cold searing into my skin as I forced the bog creature to share in my suffering.

  It wasn’t letting go.

  I wasn’t letting go.

  We fell into a grueling tug-of-war, a grotesque dance of draining HP. My foot, my arm, my boobs—each time I froze a part of myself, the thialiated, leeg bits of my life force, sapping away slivers of my HP, draggio the same goddamn grave as before.

  My bars were dropping fast. But I had one advantage.

  My healing spell.

  I forced a surge of healing into myself, ign the drain on my mana. The pain fell away, my body repairing itself, but my mana pool took the brunt of it—shrinking, dwindling, draining.

  Wait.

  No. No, no, no.

  “No!” I yelled, not in despair, but in frustration. This was the Goolem Lab all ain. The realization ignited something sharp ahing in my chest.

  I’m not a masochist!

  With every ounce of power I could summon, I forced a pulse of freezing magic outward, snapping the wet, ging filth off my body in a shockwave of ice. A sharp crack split the air, the creature snarling—or at least, making some horrible bubbling groan—as its mucky, getinous grip shattered into frozen shards.

  And then I threw the damn thing off me.

  It smmed into the sy ground, nding with a siing sptter, muddy ks flying everywhere as it skidded across the bog, crashing through reeds and sinking halfway into the muck.

  I wasn’t do.

  I threw my hands forward, summoning twin jagged nces of ice, and hurled them like spears. They pierced straight through its shifting form, freezing deep is body—but the thi bubbling, trying to pull itself back together.

  Fine.

  I smmed my heel down, and a wave of frost surged forward, spiking through the ground, turning the soggy mud beh it into a brittle sheet of ice.

  So it helps me create a game ‘the floor is ice’.

  The creature lurched, trying to move, shift, escape.

  Not this time.

  I lifted my hand, shaping an arc of razor-sharp ice, curving through the air like a crest moon, slig ly through its grotesque, shifting body.

  The top half of the creature froze solid, then cracked apart, its getinous insides snapping into shards as it colpsed in a heap of frozen, muddy sludge. It twitched ohen burst into crystalline ice dust, melting into the ground, leaving behind nothing but a vaguely foul smell and a puddle of murky water.

  Silence.

  I exhaled sharply, my breath misting in the heated air, my arms ag from the raw fory magic. I g my mana bar, wing slightly.

  Worth it.

  I nudged a remaining frozen k with my heel, watg as it cracked and crumbled.

  The hubris… just because I had a fancy legendary skill and some ented clothes didn’t mean I was suddenly untouchable. The battle had just proven that. I’d fought stro month; I could waltz through mythic-tier monsters without fling.

  But that wasn’t me anymore.

  I wasn’t John, the seasoned warrior who had exploited every system loophole to stand at the pinnacle of the tester server.

  I was Charlie now—some weird mage-priest hybrid that shouldn’t have worked, but somehow did.

  And it felt awesome.

  My clothes had already begun repairing themselves, the frost-kissed fabric weaving itself back together. A shimmer ran through the cape, the stogs tightening as if they’d never been touched, my corset smoothing bato pristine perfe.

  Self-repair.

  I barely tained my grin as I finally g the set notification h in my peripheral vision.

  This was exactly what I wished for.

  Exactly what I wanted.

  I thought back to Grumpy—one of the old forum warlords. His actual username had been something about a grumpy animal, but everyone just called him Grumpy because of how he railed against the legendary gear progression.

  He had stormed the forums, flooding thread after thread with pints about how it took him aire year just to get his legendary set attuo 50%.

  One year. For half attu.

  I smirked at the memrumpy was a legend in his ht—enting under any post about legendary items, but also one of the most dedicated grinders I’d ever seen. Hopefully, my set wouldn’t take that long, but even if it did, the first perk was already amazing.

  Self-repair.

  That alone made this the best.

  I shook myself out of my nostalgia and turned my attention back to the s, sing for movement. Enemies? None. Noise? Plenty.

  The croaking of massive frogs, the incessant buzz of mosquitoes, the drone of unseen is lurking in the muck. But no immediate threats.

  Suspicious. It’s his easy.

  I exhaled, brag myself, and took a step forward. “Let’s boldly go where—” My heels met the thick, sludgy water, sinking slightly before finding grip. A wet squelch echoed in the silence. My foot slid deeper into the bog, the mud sug hungrily at my heel.

  My stomach dropped. “…where I shouldn’t go. I want a refund, Riker.”